1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the field of job classification and more particularly to a system, method and apparatus for classifying job postings on a wide area network by generating an ONET code from an online job posting.
2. Description of the Related Art
Finding a job has progressed from word-of-mouth to newspaper want-ads to modern online services. The likes of Hotjobs.com and CareerBuilder.com have web sites containing millions of job postings. Furthermore, profession-specific sites such as careers.findlaw.com, jtpos.com have many more job postings specific to a particular industry or profession such as law. Even more geographically restricted sites such as orlandosentinel.com, Miami.com and latimes.com have job postings restricted to a certain geographic area (Orlando or Miami, Fla. and Los Angeles, Calif.). Add to that a plethora of corporate web sites such as att.com/hr (AT&T), dell.jobs.com (Dell) and 3m.com/careers (3M).
Each web site has its own database of job postings, its own search engine to help the jobseeker find the job they are looking for, its own format for displaying results and its own method/format for importing a resume from the jobseeker. Furthermore, many of these web sites require the jobseeker have an account along with a username and password. In general, tens-of-thousands of new jobs are added, expired or modified every week; requiring the jobseeker to periodically log onto all potential job posting web site (remembering their logon credentials) and searching for their desired job using the tools specific to that web site.
Adding to the difficulty in finding a job is the variability of job titles, making it difficult to exhaustively find all jobs that a job seeker is qualified to perform. For example, if a computer consultant is trying to find a job and uses the keyword, “consultant,” they may find many extraneous jobs for “tax consultant,” “financial consultant,” etc. If an engineering associate looks for “engineering associate” or “associate,” they may find extraneous jobs for “sales associate,” “check-out associate,” etc.
Fortunately, the National O*NET® Consortium was organized to accomplish the development of O*NET® for the US Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (ETA). Job Seekers can use a set of O*NET® codes to hone their job search to a focused group of job openings. Previously, the job seeker would select a very broad category such as “Accounting” or “Legal,” whereas the selection of a more specific O*NET code such as 43-3011.0 for “Bill and Account Collectors” or 13-2031.00 for “Budget Analyst” would hone their search to a set of more relevant open positions. More information regarding O*NET® codes is available from the National O*NET Consortium on the world-wide-web at http://www.onetcenter.org, of which O*NET® is a registered trademark.
Knowing a proper O*NET® code, a job seeker can hone the list of available positions down from thousands of often irrelevant openings down to a handful of focused openings. Unfortunately, many job postings are not coded with an O*NET® code, making it difficult for search software to use the O*NET® hierarchy of codes to narrow the job search.
What is needed is a system that will examine the various fields of a job posting and determine a proper O*NET® to assign to the job posting for later search and retrieval.